Britain’s second-busiest airport stalled for 36 hours. About 1,000 flights diverted or canceled. Around 140,000 passengers inconvenienced at the height of holiday travels. One broken drone recovered, and a British couple detained and then released over the weekend without being charged. (www.nytimes.com) Plus d'info...

we did all see drones buzzing gatwick, didn't we? we all noticed flight cancellations for one full day, didn't we? so , where is the problem? Perhaps a solution for the next attack of the illegal drones could be foiled by having deployed in advance counter-drones with net-carrying capacity to snag the illigimate drones- a sort of battle of the drones in the skies over souther england? or is that solution too simple? Or killer attack drones to smash the illegal ones. game, set, match to the good guys.....

Much more difficult than you think. I fly combat with radio controlled aircraft. We often fly a complete round without even a single "cut" and we are each towing 30ft streamers. And, that's with 10 aircraft per round.

As investigators searched the debris and the bodies were loaded into the bags Airport officials said: "there is no reason to suspect terrorism." Ahhhh that infamous word that NO Gvt or Airport official want's to utter. A word that has been so much abused over the years when a stupid kid with a BB Rifle fires at a school bus then charged with "Terrorism Acts."

And now we have this....."Last week, officials insisted that the drones had appeared to be a “deliberate act to endanger the airfield and aircraft,” though they did not appear to be linked to terrorism."

Funny how the Gvt can take weeks, months even years to determine the cause of a crash yet less than a week later they can rule out Terrorism.

This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System...in the event of a real Terrorist attack, or terrorist testing the system, your Gvt would down-play it.

One phantom drone sighting and a major airport shuts down and thousands of people are inconvenienced...a flock of geese or pelicans are sighted and pilots get a casual bird hazard warning. If I had to choose between hitting a flimsy drone and a flock of very solid birds I think I would choose the drone ... go figure!

So much is wrong with your post. 1. There was not just one sighting (I think there were about 60 sightings over short periods of time). 2. Birds have a self-preservation instinct that causes them to try to get out of the way of an airplane, so strike risks are lowered. 3. Birds are not make of metals and hard plastics. They are made of meat and very thin, hollow and light bones, much less hazardous than a 'flimsy' drone. I don't think a bird would do what this 'flimsy' drone did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp-xg0

We all know there are just a few Muslims in the UK. The ones that are there are "good Muslims" who study the Koran. You know this book. It is the one that says if you are not Muslim, you are an infidel and must be killed. This is my best attempt at sarcasm. I hope it gets through to those who have the power to get something done about it.

The propaganda departments in the major carriers always make the picture better than "real thing". It is shocking to find out your 4 star lounges are essentially serving what amounts to no more than fancy bean dip with your flat ale or wines aged beyond their time and taste like the "bung" the wine was bottled from.

Any radar that detects a drone is also going to detect single large birds. Radar in the U.S., (assumed similar to the U.K.) are tuned to detect only manned aircraft, and routinely pick up flocks of birds, which is considered a nuisance. If a normal aircraft control radar was picking up single large birds, it would become practically useless for detecting potentially hazardous 'primary' targets. That is why normal air traffic control radars don't detect drones.